Housekeeping

Just a quick note to let you know that I’ve updated the Adoption Resources page. Since the Choosing An Agency series is over halfway through at No Hands But Ours, I’ve started linking to those articles. I did leave a link to the original series, in case you’d prefer to read it all at once.

The parts of the fourth article which dealt with adoption disruption, adopting older children, two at once, etc. will not be appearing at NHBO. I have written up a separate post focusing on disruption/dissolution and that will publish tomorrow. I trimmed some of the links from the How Accurate Are Files From China? post because they will appear in the disruption post. I also added this paragraph of text, which I’m going to post here because I think it is so important and I am disturbed by how often I people offering this advice.

One final topic to discuss is the frequent suggestion which I’ve seen that a family should bring the child home anyway, even if they know they cannot parent the child because “there are people here who will adopt them.” I want to point out that this is completely unethical. This child is under the guardianship of the Chinese government, and the Chinese government has given your family, and only your family, permission to adopt them. On all of the documents you sign for China, and when you take the oath at the US consulate, you are promising that YOU are adopting this child forever. It doesn’t matter if you think they will be better off in the US than in their orphanage in China. It doesn’t matter if you think you know a family who can handle the child’s needs better than yours. If you knowingly adopt the child intending to turn them over to a family when you return to the US, you are committing fraud and are guilty of human trafficking.